Steve Hill - The Card: Every Match, Every Mile

Eventually missed a game, a 0-0 draw at home to Halifax the following season, feeling part sadness, part relief. Can still frequently be found on a crumbling terrace in a polyester smock bellowing, Come on Blues! These are garbage!

The roads of England are a safer place as he and his wife finally moved to France in the closed season. At the time of writing he is yet to miss a Bordeaux game, including a Europa League tie in Hungary. Says its still not the same as Chester though. Hell be back.

Didnt even put 50 on us to go down the next season as the odds were too derisory. Mindlessly misses games in order to go on holiday, and is still labouring under the misapprehension that one pint of slop differs from another.

Stood on The Harry McNally Terrace loudly swearing at the referee. For all eternity.

Confined to Australia, but still knows more about the club than anyone in this country. Presumably regrets leaving early at York.

Continues to shout at televised sport on a daily basis. Yet to successfully explain the difference between rugby league and rugby union.

Finally relieved of his duties eight matches into the next season, having failed to win a home game in 2017. Replaced by Marcus Bignot, who won his first game, at home.

Older: will do Cheltenham, or Forest Green if he can get a lift. Younger: South, South East or South West, possibly Midlands. Youngest: once went to a Freight Rover Trophy tie and has never been back.

Still gets dragged to the occasional game, and is yet to work out which goal we are attacking.

Ticked off another couple of grounds, but still wonders why hes the only Chester fan at his school. Faces a future of unparalleled misery and joy

Hilarious, heroic and utterly futile, this is Withnail & I for non-league football.

Dan Davies, author, In Plain Sight

Steve Hills everyman deconstruction of the full time football fan is heartbreaking and hilarious. Yes, weve all been there... but not 50 times in the same season.

Steve McKevitt, author, Playing With The Boys

Admirable blind faith in finding the end of a blue and white rainbow.

Jonathan Legard, BBC

Non-league ground-hoppers take note: theres a new sheriff in town. A very funny read.

Alex Narey, editor, The Non-League Paper

Published by Ockley Books Limited, Huddersfield, England

First published June 2018

All text copyright of the identified author, the moral right of Steve Hill to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior permission in writing from the author, Steve Hill, and the publisher Ockley Books

ISBN - 978-1-912643-745

Layout & design by Michael Kinlan, edited by Richard Foster

Printed & bound by:

Biddles Printing, Kings Lynn

Steve Hill has written for numerous publications including FourFourTwo, loaded, Maxim, Esquire, Vive Le Rock, PokerPlayer, PC Zone, The Independent and The Non-League Paper. He lives in North West London and can see Wembley Stadium from his bedroom window. To date, Chester have never played there.

TWITTER: @HillyTheFish

For Her Indoors and The Boy

the card (ka:d)

noun

Every first team fixture of a football clubs season.

usage. 1. doing the card. To attend every fixture of a season.

2. on the card. To be in the process of attempting to complete ones card. eg, I hear Hill is on the card. What a tit.

Fuck this life. 6:16am. Toothbrush in hand, I peer out of the bathroom window. In the distance, the Wembley Arch cruelly mocks my plight. A different international stadium is the destination today, as the so-called fixture computer has deemed that Chester FC will begin their season at Gateshead, a mere 242 miles north as the crow, or indeed British Airways, flies. The first trip is the longest: the first cut is the deepest.

The Uber driver to Paddington wonders why I have no baggage. He doesnt see the 32 years of emotional baggage accrued from following this shower of shit, season after season, game after game, all over this land. I absolutely love it. Today is something of a first, however. After years of idly talking about it, weve actually booked a flight to the match, with the 8:30am from Heathrow to Newcastle offering ample time for a tear-up, the game, and then a flight back the same evening. Im not sure if it counts, but technically I did fly to a game once before, taking a plane from San Francisco to Heathrow, from where The Driver took me directly to Mansfield. Won 3-1.

Four days before the start of this season, The Driver sent me a text saying, We have decided to move to France.

Got to be my last chance for the card, I replied hilariously.

The Heathrow Express delivers me to Terminal 5, where The Driver and The Hack are already waiting, having travelled from Newbury and Brighton respectively, more or less. Each resplendent in replica shirts, Im letting the side down, and The Hack is disappointed, keen that three pricks in Chester tops should be something of a talking point. In the event, nobody gives the tiniest shit, and were not even the only football fans on the flight, with a lone Newcastle supporter licking his wounds after a Friday night defeat at Fulham.

Following a failed attempt to get into the BA lounge, I take advantage of a shop giving out free vodka, and assume a window seat on the big bird. Its with giddy excitement and obligatory terror that we take off, actually flying to a game like a triumvirate of massive overgrown show-offs. That said, its considerably cheaper than the train, and you are at least guaranteed a seat.

The blind optimism of the opening match of the season is a universal trait, whatever the predicament. We have a rookie manager at the helm, with former assistant Jon McCarthy having been appointed in the summer after winning three of his four games as caretaker. Furthermore, our three best players have left for pastures new, and we havent got a pot to piss in. But as it stands were equal top of The National League, and it really is a national league, stretching from Torquay to Gateshead and all points in between.

Literally anything could happen today, by which I mean a win, a draw or a defeat. Or a postponement, highly unlikely given the sweltering weather. The Metro takes us straight into the heart of Newcastle city centre, and it feels odd to be so far away without the pain of a five-hour motorway slog. Bowling around the Bigg Market before the pubs are even open, the streets are largely deserted, but there is a strong sense that something happened here a few short hours earlier, a feral combination of drinking, fighting and rutting. In other words, the very stuff of life itself.